You’ve met your NaNoWriMo goal! Good for you! I know how hard you’ve worked to crank out your first draft.

If this is your first novel, I bet you feel giddy. Drunk with excitement. You’ve just created the next LORD OF THE RINGS! The next HUNGER GAMES! You must get this published ASAP.

STOP.

Before even thinking about trying to get an agent, you should do these things:

1) Revise, revise, revise. Revise your novel eleventy billion times.

2) Get several people to read it (not all at once). People who will tell you the truth. People who will rip it to shreds. People who will tell you what’s wonderful about your work, and how to highlight it.

3) Revise again.

4) Get other people to read it. (I sometimes use a freelance editor.) Get people in your target audience to read your work – e.g. teenagers if you’re writing YA, horror-lovers if you’ve written something a la Stephen King.